Searching
by sam507ripit
Summary: Sam reflects on Jack's statement: "I'd look for you."


Title: Searching  
  
Author: sam507ripit  
  
Spoilers: Sam in therapy  
  
Disclaimer: Without a Trace isn't mine, it belongs to CBS and other rich people.  
  
Author's Note: I ship J/S but right now Sam and Jack are stuck between a rock and a hard place and not the most fun thing to play with. So when this popped into my head, I decided to give it a shot and actually post for once. Its sort of post-episode based on unsubstantiated theories but J/S was originally just a theory so who knows?   
  
"I'd look for you."  
  
What would I want with such a simple statement? A declaration of attachment with such twisted strings drawn between him and me. A mess really, when it all comes down to it. There are a hundred agents that could search for me if the need arise. Facts, pictures, lies, deceptions are all there for anyone to dig around in. To walk through my own life, to find the most twisted moments and perverted relationships as keys to lay a woman bare. Hell, if it was torture, a serial killer, or if I just hid myself pretty damn well, it could be someone's Case. What would I need that statement for from that man?  
  
I never looked. Not one. At least not where I expected to find her. I saw glimpses of her everywhere: in supermarkets delicatessens, and train stops. Those excited eyes peering over airplane seats. But none were her.   
  
I knew, of course. My baby was perfect like an angel with a laugh so unique I could tell it was her in the midst of twenty other cackling little kids. The way she played in mud and talked non stop creating stories out of past events, creating worlds for the people that spent a few minutes in her presence. Her eyes in the sun and her hands dripping blood. Somehow every moment with her made up my existence so every moment is locked in my memory.  
  
It was over in a flash. I can't understand how some people handle it doing other things and just sitting. There was so much to be done and so little time. So little time. I remember the questions.   
  
  
  
"Where were you, Ms. Spade? How old is she? Does she wander off much? Is she in contact with her father? Where were you? Does she know her phone number and how to handle a phone?"  
  
I want to shout, throw things, but that wasn't me. Not then. Not when my world was missing the little version of me with every reason to hope and lacking all my strangling faults.  
  
"Do you have any current pictures of your daughter, ma'am?"  
  
Thousands, millions if you care to draw all the ones in my mind. The picture, should it be her playing in the mud or the crazy pictures of her last birthday where she cut her own cake and herself? Will my daughter be found face down in the mud or with cuts all over? They wanted the type of picture like her kindergarten one. A simple clear view of her face with blue eyes and blond curls. But that wasn't my baby. She was always moving I said, always talking. They'd hear her before they'd see her. That was the last time I talked about my baby.   
  
I spent those hours looking for myself. Examining my past but not her short one. I didn't enter her room but I locked myself in mine.  
  
The phone tap was ridiculous. I looked at the agent sitting there, eyes darting around and staring at her drawings. I was so angry. SO ready to lash out on those that mattered least. They wanted me to wait in the kitchen with those bright pictures done half naked in the driveway to avoid making messes and all I saw were my faults. My failures. They made me sit there for an eternity waiting for a call from a daughter that didn't run away and a man that wasn't looking for money when her torn dress was found right where she was taken.   
  
I didn't know what we were waiting for. The man that judged and sat holding more statistics and facts then I did then was counting the hours. I am too familiar with the hours now, the dreaded count towards the ironical point of no return.   
  
If a person is too say missing, shouldn't they be that way from the beginning? A strange idea of destiny that I step in and change all the time. But there are those that we never hear from again, somehow disappear without a trace. Their destiny is deeply carved in stone and the hours only count down to the inevitable. Its easier to think that way now but then it rested on me. On what I did. Not the hundreds of people but my own self vigilance in wading through my own messy ties.   
  
When they found him, I freaked. More so then, then when they found her. There were the reassurances that he was in fact a state away. A whole state away and in custody for some measly charge to do with his car. I couldn't stop thinking about him and me.   
  
What if I was right, what if I was wrong?   
  
Do I say anything about him? I know now they probably got whatever they needed out of him but then... I couldn't sit still. I drew unseen patterns in the table and choked down a glass of water that tasted of blood.  
  
It was in slow motion the time the agent left for good. A chair squawked, papers shuffled and ties broke. The little recorder hooked to the phone pocketed for another day, another case. The first time I realized the time and the emptiness. There were promises made about keeping the phones open, not mine, and following leads. The rest doesn't matter. It was over then and at that moment I realized the beginning, the middle, and the end. To never hear her laugh, to see her eyes to walk home next to her.  
  
I never left that kitchen table.  
  
I knew. I was the one that failed her. Not the agents who spend hours making calls, talking to people, and unraveling my short existence not one of the hundred people that much have seen her case or offered help or lied. It was me she was thinking of when she was thrown into the van, when he raped her, when she was left alone. It was me she looked to for safety and love and that is where I failed her. There will be no final words for her to hear, to take as her own. No story for me to collaborate on, just an end. No one to answer her cries fo "mom" and when it comes down to it, I will be crying for Jack and no one will answer me either. What good will Jack's statement do me then? 


End file.
